| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: off his harness and leaped into the water and did marvellously
to rescue the little hound. But the fierce river dragged his
legs, and buffeted him, and hurtled at him, and drew him down,
as it were an enemy wrestling with him, so that he had much
ado to come where the brachet was, and more to win back again,
with the brachet in his arm, to the dry land.
Which when he had done he was clean for-spent and fell
upon the ground as a dead man. At this the young maid wept
yet more bitterly than she had wept for her hound, and cried
aloud, "Alas, if so goodly a man should spend his life for my
little brachet!" So she took his head upon her knee and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: short in his tracks.
Then he broke into a run. For a whole block he tore after the car,
only a little ways behind. That rusty black hat with the drooping
red flower, it might not be Ona's, but there was very little likelihood
of it. He would know for certain very soon, for she would get out
two blocks ahead. He slowed down, and let the car go on.
She got out: and as soon as she was out of sight on the side street
Jurgis broke into a run. Suspicion was rife in him now, and he was
not ashamed to shadow her: he saw her turn the corner near their home,
and then he ran again, and saw her as she went up the porch steps
of the house. After that he turned back, and for five minutes paced
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Fled forward, and no news of Enoch came.
It chanced one evening Annie's children long'd
To go with others, nutting to the wood,
And Annie would go with them; then they begg'd
For Father Philip (as they call'd him) too:
Him, like the working bee in blossom-dust,
Blanch'd with his mill, they found; and saying to him
`Come with us Father Philip' he denied;
But when the children pluck'd at him to go,
He laugh'd, and yielding readily to their wish,
For was not Annie with them? and they went.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: of the advantages which civilization and co-operation place at the
command of an intelligently directed body of husbandmen. Talk about
the land not being worth cultivating! Go to the Swiss Valleys and
examine for yourself the miserable patches of land, hewed out as it
were from the heart of the granite mountains, where the cottager grows
his crops and makes a livelihood. No doubt he has his Alp, where his
cows pasture in summer-time, and his other occupations which enable him
to supplement the scanty yield of his farm garden among the crags;
but if it pays the Swiss mountaineer in the midst of the eternal snows,
far removed from any market, to cultivate such miserable soil in the
brief summer of the high Alps, it is impossible to believe that
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
